


Gallant Captain Wentworth

by Leidolette



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, Selkies, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:34:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27221299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: Captain Wentworth does indeed go to the bottom together with theAsp, but he doesn’t rest there.
Relationships: Anne Elliot/Frederick Wentworth
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Gallant Captain Wentworth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neutrophilic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neutrophilic/gifts).



> Happy Trick or Treat!

Soon after the year six, Captain Wentworth went down with the _Asp_ , an event indeed little noticed by the local newspapers of England. He was mourned only by his friends, his family, and one that could make no claim on him at all.

But that was not the end of Wentworth. 

The sea has its secrets, and it’s whims, and sometimes down in the briney darkness things do not unfold as may be expected. So it was with Captain Wentworth. When the water rushed into his lungs, his spirit did not depart. Instead it hung suspended under the waves; neutral buoyancy not allowing it to either rise or fall, only to think for a very long time. 

What took the longest to accept was the galling realization that Lady Russell’s advice to Anne had shown itself to be entirely prudent. He would have left Anne a widow little more than a year into their marriage. 

But death has a way of cutting to the crux of the matter. Wentworth’s resentment against Anne dissolved away as the rocking of the ocean ground his bones down to sand, only the love remained. Every slight he’d felt at the hands of her family, every sleepless night after the broken engagement, it was all carried away by the currents to far away shores. 

The thing that was still Wentworth in all the ways that mattered knew what he wanted: if she would have him, he wanted none but Anne.

* * *

Even without the suggestions of a charismatic Navy captain, the Musgrove family did eventually find their way to Lyme, with Mary Musgrove pulling a distant and lonely Anne along with her to the shore. They had taken a set of rooms earlier that day, and the family had eagerly discussed and squabbled among itself over what delights of Lyme they should pursue first. 

It hadn’t been difficult at all for Anne to slip out unnoticed. She’d had a gradually growing desire to see the night ocean, just as she had in her dreams. Her dreams had grown so peculiar as of late — they all involved the sea, or, rather something in the sea, perhaps. She could never quite remember upon waking.

Anne left her boots on the stones and stepped into the freezing water up to her ankles. This was not quite the proper thing for an Elliot to be engaged in — barefoot in the sea at night, all alone — but their lodgings had been terribly stuffy, and everyone was employed in fussing over their children or acting out their domestic dramas. 

Anne dug her slowly numbing toes into the pebbles beneath her feet. The yellow lights from the windows of the town behind her were mere pinpricks. She gazed at the moon, almost full, and breathed the sea air. _I could almost have slipped into one of my dreams,_ she thought absently. _Next, there shall be some manner of disturbance in the—_

There was a ripple that displaced the natural rhythm of the waves. Anne’s eyes snapped to the dark shape that coalesced under the moon’s reflection. 

A harbor seal broke the surface. Just a seal. The moon shone in its black, liquid eyes. The animal dove under again, swimming closer. 

It was a seal.

It was not a seal...

It was...

Lapping waves parted around Anne’s bare feet on the edge of the strand, and the water was similarly accommodating when another pair of larger feet stepped closer to hers from the sea. 

The most curious feeling stole over Anne. She was not afraid, not as if she had seen a ghost, but as if a carriage had finally arrived containing a dear friend she hadn’t seen in far, far too long. 

Captain Wentworth stood before her, tall and proud in his Navy blues. Moonlight glinted off his buttons and eyes. Despite emerging from the sea, he was dry, and the night breeze ruffled his hair. Anne would almost say his countenance was unchanged since their last meeting, though any living being would instinctively understand that the differences were more profound than the simple surface could show. 

But then he smiled, and Anne knew that, despite this, he was Wentworth all the same. When he held his arms out, she did not hesitate to step into them. 

His embrace fortified her unlike anything she had ever known. It was as if his arms had wrapped her in a luxurious fur, impervious to the cold and wet from head to toe. 

That dark northern sea that spread out to eternity in front of her no longer threatened, but beckoned. She had finally learned romance. 

Hand in hand, Anne and Wentworth walked into the sea, following the path set by the glimmering moon reflecting off the waves. It felt like walking down the aisle.


End file.
